Travel season is upon us, as we in the Northern Hemisphere welcome summer and its promise of being a tourist. And what better way to experience a culture than to dive into its cuisine? I'm sure many of us will be looking for places to eat during our vacations.
That's why today we're bringing you the things people advise you to look out for when picking where to eat. One netizen recently asked: "What are red flags at a restaurant?" And people made many observations, from disaffected-looking staff to dirty premises and formerly alive fruit flies on the windowsills.
What things make you want to leave a restaurant immediately? Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to upvote your favorite submissions below!
Bored Panda reached out to Professional Chef Eugene Wong to know more about red flags in restaurants. Today, Eugene is an online content creator, sharing his expertise and cooking tips with people on TikTok. But for more than 20 years, he was a professional chef, including in Michelin restaurants. Read his recommendations on what to pay attention to when deciding whether a restaurant is worth it below!
#21
Dirty bathroom. The cleanliness of the bathroom mirrors the cleanliness of the kitchen.
33points
#22
When you go in and most of the guests have dirty plates on their tables and are looking around for a server. Add in empty tables still piled with plates and you know they are incredibly short staffed. Time to bail out.
30points
#23
Does a restaurant sound like it could be two or more restaurants? For example, if they're serving sushi and pizza at the same place, they can't do either well.
30points
#24
All the staff standing around just staring off into space because corporate told them it looks unprofessional to just relax
When people are constantly kept uptight and not given a chance to relax they f**k up and mess things up. If your greeter already looks so low-key frustrated that they look like they want to explode into an anxiety attack at every second I can only imagine the mistakes the chef in the back is making being kept under the same pressure.
28points
#25
Service/worker compensation charge snuck onto the bill that you have to opt out of.
25points
#26
Dead flies on the interior window sills.
25points
#27
Massive towers of food and/or those extreme bloody mary's with an entire burger stuck to the glass designed for people to post on Instagram. The quality is never going to be good, and it probably means the restaurant relies on people coming for the spectacle rather than the quality.
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25points
#28
Incoherent menu. Cuisines that don't often have ingredients in common, which means some ingredients may sit longer.
24points
#29
I was once somewhere with a friend, and she ordered a meatloaf. They said they were out of it. No big deal. She orders something else, and 5 minutes later, they come back and said "Hey, we found some meatloaf, do you want that instead?"
We excused ourselves and left.
I get it, maybe there was just some miscommunication or something, but they way she said "We found *some* meatloaf".... it scared us both.
24points
#31
The restaurant doesn't seem to exist.
Don't assume that because it is on a delivery service website that it is a real restaurant. Lots of ghost kitchen restaurants. That food may be coming from an illegal kitchen.
Recently had to inform my friend that her favorite sushi place isn't real. Ooof.
Order directly from the restaurant when you can.
16points
#32
As a foreigner myself, it’s ethnic restaurants that have zero ethnic people eating there.
It’s a huge green flag to me when I go to an Indian, Chinese, middle eastern, etc restaurant and the clientele are all of that particular region, and a red flag when they are not like Lapis aka the worst Afghan restaurant I went to in Washington DC.
15points
#33
If you're looking at the menu outside, and an employee/manager comes out to usher you into the restaurant.
I've only had that happen once, but it was clear pretty quickly why they were so desperate for my business.
14points
#34
There's a soap dispenser attached to the wall that is perpetually empty, so they put a regular disposable soap dispenser on the counter.
I'm sure there's good reasons, but it screams lazy to me.
11points
#35
If all anyone can talk about is the view, then you might as well go to a diner because the food will be bad (awful for what you'll pay). I've never worked nor eaten anywhere with a 'stunning view' that didn't serve lukewarm garbage at a highway robbery price.
8points
#36
No one eating there when it’s time to eat.
2points
#37
A big one for me is if there is only one demographic there, only old folks being the kiss of death for a eatery.
If I see blue collar and white collar types in the same place I know it is probably pretty good quality.
0points
